Playing in the gap

Evotec AG says its new partnership with AstraZeneca plc in kidney diseases is leveraging the biotech's ability to bridge the drug discovery gap between academia and pharma. While the company's academic deals did not generate the targets and compounds Evotec and AstraZeneca will work on, Evotec said the two streams of work are complementary.

Evotec's business model has undergone multiple shifts throughout its 20-year history: it began as a target validation and high throughput screening provider, then moved into developing compounds through Phase IIa, and later billed itself as a pure-play CNS company (see BioCentury, Dec. 16, 2002 & Oct. 8, 2007). ...